…because this is the critical issue of our time? What kind of radicalized whack job sues to do something like this? What kind of radicalized whack job attorney actually takes a lawsuit to do this? I will tell you; it is the kind of person who is radicalized by our public schools and universities.
A school district in Rhode Island has ended the traditional father-daughter dance because the longtime tradition violated the state’s gender discrimination law.
Judith Lundsten, an assistant school superintendent in Cranston, tells Fox News the move came in response to a complaint from a single mother after her daughter wasn’t allowed to attend a father-daughter dance.
“The parent felt it was not appropriate and filed a complaint with the ACLU,” she said.
The American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to the district demanding that all father-daughter and mother-son events be cancelled.
Lundsten said school attorneys found while federal gender discrimination laws exempt such events, Rhode Island’s does not.
“At this point, the law states that we cannot have these gender-specific type activities,” Lundsten told Fox News. “
It is good to see Republicans talking about elite media bias and actively taking strategy to counter it. It is important to make examples of elite media reporters by name when they decide to behave like state run media.
It’s hard to compete with someone who gets Nobel Prizes and Grammy Awards just for showing up at the office. In running against someone as highly praised as Barack Obama, Mitt Romney has his work cut out for him. As his supporters point out, Wednesday night’s presidential debate offers the Republican candidate a chance to present his plan for prosperity directly to the country. He needs to take it.
On Sunday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie explained the importance of the debate to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “Let’s face it, George, there’s been a lot of filtering going on,” the Republican chief executive said to the former Democratic aide. “This is the first moment when the American people are going to be able to see these two guys side by side laying out their vision unfiltered. And I think that’s going to be a powerful moment for Mitt Romney.”
The Media Research Center (MRC) on Tuesday documented the purported impartiality of Mr. Stephanopoulos‘ debate analysis since he joined ABC in 1997. According to MRC, the anchor of “This Week” and “Good Morning America” declared the Democratic candidate the winner in eight of the nine general election presidential debates.
Over on “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace mentioned two stories this week that struck him about media bias. He held up the Washington Post from Wednesday and pointed to the lead story, “Ohio, Florida Give Obama an Edge,” and the sidebar, “For Obama, the Buckeye State May be a Bull’s-eye.” The Fox News anchor noted that his wife had said to him, “I guess the race is over according to The Washington Post.”
He then showed the cover of Time magazine this week, which has Mr. Romney in a church stained-glass window, and noted that with just five weeks before the election, the magazine was focused on the candidate’s religion instead of his economic or foreign policies.
Mr. Wallace also asked his guest, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, whether he thinks “the mainstream media is carrying water for Barack Obama.” The Wisconsin Republican replied, “I think it kind of goes without saying that there’s definitely a media bias. … I’m a conservative person, I’m used to media bias. We expected media bias going into this.”
Doug Schoen was Bill Clinton’s pollster in the White House and Pat Caddell had the same position for Jimmy Carter. These are not “right wing” bloggers and pundits. These two men have been as in the center of Democratic Party politics as it gets for the last 35 years.
We have written about the incredible amounts of media bias that has been at a whole new level since 2008, and while that bias has been there since the 1960’s, it has never been as outrageous as it is today.
Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen with Megyn Kelly:
To see the entire video where Pat Caddell makes his case go HERE.
Here is the Gallup Poll that is referred to in the conversation:
September 21, 2012
U.S. Distrust in Media Hits New High
Fewer Americans closely following political news now than in previous election years
by Lymari Morales
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ distrust in the media hit a new high this year, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. Distrust is up from the past few years, when Americans were already more negative about the media than they had been in years prior to 2004.
The record distrust in the media, based on a survey conducted Sept. 6-9, 2012, also means that negativity toward the media is at an all-time high for a presidential election year. This reflects the continuation of a pattern in which negativity increases every election year compared with the year prior. The current gap between negative and positive views — 20 percentage points — is by far the highest Gallup has recorded since it began regularly asking the question in the 1990s. Trust in the media was much higher, and more positive than negative, in the years prior to 2004 — as high as 72% when Gallup asked this question three times in the 1970s.
This year’s decline in media trust is driven by independents and Republicans. The 31% and 26%, respectively, who express a great deal or fair amount of trust are record lows and are down significantly from last year. Republicans’ level of trust this year is similar to what they expressed in the fall of 2008, implying that they are especially critical of election coverage.
More broadly, Republicans continue to express the least trust in the media, while Democrats express the most. Independents’ trust fell below the majority level in 2004 and has continued to steadily decline.
$3.59 – When Barack Obama entered the White House, the average price of a gallon of gasoline was $1.85. Today, it is $3.59.
22 – It is hard to believe, but today the poverty rate for children living in the United States is a whopping 22 percent.
23 – According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities permanently shut down in the United States every single day during 2010.
30 – Back in 2007, about 10 percent of all unemployed Americans had been out of work for 52 weeks or longer. Today, that number is above 30 percent.
32 – The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.
35 – U.S. housing prices are now down a total of 35 percent from the peak of the housing bubble.
40 – The official U.S. unemployment rate has been above 8 percent for 40 months in a row.
42 – According to one survey, 42 percent of all American workers are currently living paycheck to paycheck.
48 – Shockingly, at this point 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.
49 – Today, an astounding 49.1 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives benefits from the government.
60 – According to a recent Gallup poll, only 60 percent of all Americans say that they have enough money to live comfortably.
61 – At this point the Federal Reserve is essentially monetizing much of the U.S. national debt. For example, the Federal Reserve bought up approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department during 2011.
63 – One recent survey found that 63 percent of all Americans believe that the U.S. economic model is broken.
$6000 – If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.
$10,000 – According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.
49,000 – In 2011, our trade deficit with China was more than 49,000 times larger than it was back in 1985.
50,000 – The United States has lost an average of approximately 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
56,000 – The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
$85,000 – According to the New York Times, a Jeep Grand Cherokee that costs $27,490 in the United States costs about $85,000 in China thanks to all the tariffs.
$175,587 – The Obama administration spent $175,587 to find out if cocaine causes Japanese quail to engage in sexually risky behavior.
$328,404 – Over the next 75 years, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars. That comes to $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.
$361,330 – This is what the average banker in New York City made in 2010.
440,00 – If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to totally pay it off.
500,000 – According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.
2,000,000 – Family farms are being systematically wiped out of existence in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of farms in the United States has fallen from about 6.8 million in 1935 to only about 2 million today.
2,600,000 – In 2010, 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
5,400,000 – When Barack Obama first took office there were 2.7 million long-term unemployed Americans. Today there are twice as many.
16,000,000 – It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.
$20,000,000 – The amount of money the U.S. government was spending to create a version of Sesame Street for children in Pakistan.
25,000,000 – Today, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.
40,000,000 – According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.
46,405,204 – The number of Americans currently on food stamps. When Barack Obama first entered the White House there were only 32 million Americans on food stamps.
88,000,000 – Today there are more than 88 million working age Americans that are not employed and that are not looking for employment. That is an all-time record high.
100,000,000 – Overall, there are more than 100 million working age Americans that do not currently have jobs.
$150,000,000 – This is approximately the amount of money that the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress are stealing from future generations of Americans every single hour.
$2,000,000,000 – The amount of money that JP Morgan has admitted that it will lose from derivatives trades gone bad. Many analysts are convinced that the real number will actually end up being much higher.
$147,000,000,000 – In the U.S., medical costs related to obesity are estimated to be approximately 147 billion dollars a year.
295,500,000,000 – Our trade deficit with China in 2011 was $295.5 billion. That was the largest trade deficit that one country has had with another country in the history of the planet.
$359,100,000,000 – During the first quarter of 2012, U.S. public debt rose by 359.1 billion dollars. U.S. GDP only rose by 142.4 billion dollars.
$454,000,000,000 – During fiscal 2011, the U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt.
$1,000,000,000,000 – The total amount of student loan debt in the United States recently surpassed the one trillion dollar mark.
$1,170,000,000,000 – China now holds approximately 1.17 trillion dollars of U.S. government debt. Yet the U.S. government continues to send them millions of dollars in foreign aid every year.
$1,600,000,000,000 – The amount that has been added to the U.S. national debt since the Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives. This is more than the first 97 Congresses added to the national debt combined.
$5,000,000,000,000 – The U.S. national debt has risen by more than 5 trillion dollars since the day that Barack Obama first took office. In a little more than 3 years Obama has added more to the national debt than the first 41 presidents combined.
$5,000,000,000,000 – What the real U.S. budget deficit in 2011 would have been if the federal government had used generally accepted accounting principles.
$11,440,000,000,000 – The total amount of consumer debt in the United States.
$200,000,000,000,000 – Today, the 9 largest banks in the United States have a total of more than 200 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives. When the derivatives market completely collapses there won’t be enough money in the entire world to fix it.
Unfortunately this is not an unusual happenstance at our universities today. The progressive secular left is very well entrenched in public education and antisemitism is very fashionable on campus and as actively promoted by many faculty and university administrators. Unless one is active on following campus issues, one would have no idea how extreme and prevalent antisemitism on campus has become. Colleges across the country even sponsor “Israeli Apartheid Week” on campus with student funds. At these events they call for the genocide and elimination of Israel.
To combat this, famed actor Robert Davi has narrated and helped create the following video to combat the lies used to indoctrinate students with at these events and to show what happens at events at colleges across the country. This is a must see video.
You had no idea such nonsense is being preached to your kids on campus did you? Most parent’s don’t.
At universities that are not quite so entrenched by progressive secular antisemitism the hated and discrimination is not so bold, but rather is demonstrated in other ways such as the denial of Jewish and Christian student groups for recognition, which is illegal, and groups such as FIRE and the Alliance Defense Fund have been somewhat successful and overcoming such tactics by campus administrators. As a former Chief Justice of Student Government at my alma mater I was made aware of several cases if professors and administrators discrimination against such students (fortunately a warning from me was enough to help make the offender back off in most cases). It amazed me the leaps of “logic” that academics and radicalized administrators would take to justify their illegal actions and it amazed me how they could make the most unreasonable positions sound reasonable in order to justify their outrageous actions.
I contacted R. Tamara de Silva of the Thomas Jefferson Legal Institute, the attorney involved in the case, to comment but she informed me that the judge in the case has asked both sides to not speak to the press. The institute has said that “religious freedom goes to the heart of the First Amendment. The desire of people to freely exercise their religion has been and is, one of the most powerful political forces in the world”.
CHICAGO (CN) – Northwestern University is discriminating against the Jewish faith by dissociating with a Chabad organization that has been on its campus for 27 years, the group claims in federal court.
Chabad-Lubavitch is a hasidic movement and major form of Orthodox Judaism with more than 3,300 institutions, or Chabad houses, worldwide.
“At the very inception of the Tannenbaum House, in the early 1980s, Chabad had to litigate its right practice religion freely in the city of Evanston,” according to the complaint. “The court, in hearing the matter, determined that ‘the real fear of the defendant city and intervenors is that [Chabad] will use its property to permit the plaintiffs to practice their ancient religion in the way they have conducted it for the past centuries.’ Today, Chabad once again has to fight for that right.”
As a university chaplain, Rabbi Dov Hillel Kelin uses a stipend to obtain kosher food from a third-party vendor, Sodexo.
But on Sept. 11, 2012, the university allegedly sent Klein a letter that it was disassociating from Tannenbaum House.
Though the complaint does not quote from the letter, it says hints that allegations of misconduct against Klein are at the root.
“Northwestern had no legal reason to disassociate from the Tannenbaum House,” the complaint states. “The university knew that its proffered reasons were specious and based upon innuendo and falsehood. The reasons offered for that disassociation were wholly pretextual and meant to single out Chabad against all other faiths for removal from Northwestern University.
“Even if the reasons offered for that disassociation were not false, many other campus organizations including religious organizations, had committed the same acts for which Rabbi Klein stood falsely accused,” it continues. “The university was aware of this, and chose only to disassociate with Chabad.”
The Chabad House says Northwestern disassociated “solely on the basis of Rabbi Klein’s, LCI’s and the Tannenbaum Chabad House’s affiliation with Chabad Chassidism.”
“Northwestern University would not have taken this action if plaintiffs were not adherents of Chabad Chassidism,” it adds.
Northwestern has allegedly barred Klein from renewing his contract with Sodexo or “sponsoring a Birthright Israel trip.
“If Rabbi Klein is enjoined from participating in the above referenced activities, and contracts, and if Rabbi Klein is cut off from providing authentic Jewish and Chassidic experiences to Northwestern University students, it would case irreparable harm to Rabbi Klein, to the charter and purposes of the Tannenbaum Chabad House, and to Lubavitch-Chabad of Illinois,” the complaint states. “It would also cause irreparable harm to Jewish students of Northwestern University.”
Klein, Lubavitch-Chabad of Illinois and Lubavitch-Chabad of Illinois dba The Tannenbaum Chabad House sued Northwestern University, University Chaplain Timothy Stevens and Vice President for Student Affairs Patricia Telles-Irvin.
They seek punitive damages for violations of the Civil Rights Act, and an injunction for Klein.
Tamara de Silva represents the Chabad House and Klein.
Northwestern spokesman Al Cubbage told Courthouse News that he was not aware of the lawsuit and declined to comment on Northwestern’s motivation for dissociating from Chabad House.
Joe Donnelly is a member of the House of Representatives in Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District (South Bend) and is running for Senate in Indiana against Republican Dick Mourdock.
In the interests of full disclosure, Joe is my Congressman and I have talked with him a few times.
Joe Donnelly is one of “those” swing district politicians. What do I mean by that? Donnelly plays a very dishonest balancing act of keeping his right foot in Indiana and his far left foot in DC. Joe Donnelly is a reliable vote for the far left on any close vote, but on some big votes where the party leadership knows it has enough to pass what they like, Donnelly will vote ‘No’ so he can come home and tell the South Bend Tribune what an independent conservative Democrat he is; all while ensuring that Pelosi and the Democrat leadership get what they want. The most famous player of this game in Indiana politics is former Congressman Tim Roemer, who of course is also from South Bend.
One of the most famous examples of Roemer’s play of this style of politics was on the 1993 Clinton tax increase and budget. Roemer voted to preserve Clinton’s new taxes and spending increases in the new budget 44 times in votes as the Bill was being amended and debated, but on the final vote, knowing it had enough voted to pass the House, he voted ‘No’ so he could come home and tell the people that the Clinton Budget spent and taxed too much.
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell once said that we need ‘Blue Dogs’ like Donnelly because they help cover what the real socialists are doing.
Indiana has a great deal of medical device manufacturing, Bayer, Miles Labs, and countless others have a long history here. While the 2.3% tax that Donnelly voted for on medical devices might not seem like a lot if you are talking about a device such as a personal blood sugar meter from Bayer, which is made in Donnelly’s home district, on a top of the line MRI Machine that tax translates into a $11,500 tax on every machine. In order to stay competitive with overseas competition cuts will have to be made and often that means outsourcing. While not every medical device costs as much as an MRI, X-Ray machines and defibrillator’s etc still cost tens of thousands of dollars so the 2.3% tax makes the difference between being competitive and non-competitive. While Democrats are still struggling to explain how ObamaCare will make health care cheaper by slapping over 20 new taxes on it, the medical device tax is already costing Indiana much needed jobs:
An Indiana company’s decision to scrap expansion plans due to a looming tax on medical devices has renewed pressure on the Senate to consider a House-passed bill repealing the tax.
House Speaker John Boehner, in a written statement, urged the Senate to take up the bill “as soon as possible.”
Companies in the medical device industry for months have been calling on Congress to strip the provision. Amid the complaints, though, several firms have already taken steps to cut back U.S. investment out of concern for the tax’s impact.
Cook Medical, an Indiana-based medical equipment manufacturer, last week said it’s nixing plans to open five new plants in the next five years — claiming the tax will cost between $15 million and $30 million a year, cutting into money that would otherwise go toward expanding into new facilities in the Midwest.
“Unfortunately, we have had to shelve these expansion plans and look overseas for that,” Allison Giles, vice president for federal affairs with the company, told FoxNews.com. “It’s a huge amount for us.”
Valerir Jarrett is a Chicago Democrat Party power broker and President Obama’s most trusted advisor. The slum lord side of her business has been known to those active in politics for a long time, but outside of Chicago what is less known is that the Chicago Tax Board of Review, which is headed by Cook County Democrat Chairman Joe Berrios, is essentially ran as a RICO enterprise trading influence and donations for big breaks on property tax assessments. We wrote about this as a part of a larger story on Chicago corruption HERE.
[See the RICO filing against the Chicago BOR HERE. The RICO complaint charges the Commissioners on the Board of Tax Appeals and their staff with extortion and bribery. It states that the Commissioners, powerful members of the Cook County Democratic Party and the Machine, grant tax reductions based upon the campaign contributions made by property tax law firms and lawyers who practice before the Board of Review. Institutionalizing “bribery and quid pro quo as the mandatory means for the adjudication of tax appeals” in Chicago.]
Senior White House adviser and long-time Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett’s role in a number of controversial Chicago housing developments has garnered her investments worth millions of dollars while highlighting the administration’s extensive business ties to presidential donors.
Before joining the Obama administration in 2009, Jarrett was president and chief executive officer of the Habitat Company, a real estate development firm founded by major Democratic donor Daniel Levin. Before that, she served three years as commissioner of the Chicago Department of Planning and Development under Mayor Richard Daley.
She valued the investment at between $1 million and $5 million on her 2011 financial disclosure form, up from $250,001 in 2010. A Jarrett spokesman told the Washington Times that the investment was “a direct result of her 13 years working for Habitat.”
Cook County records show the Kingsbury property is worth around $27.2 million, but thanks to a series of legal appeals beginning in 2003, the land and building are assessed at a much lower value for tax purposes. Since 2008, the property has been designated a “special commercial structure” and is taxed at a value of just $6.8 million, or 25 percent of the actual value.
Asked how such a property could enjoy such a low taxable value, an official with the Cook County Assessor’s Office told the Free Beacon that the property’s owners “must have good attorneys.”
Valerie Jarrett and Barack Obama
In addition to Jarrett’s investment through her former employer, she received deferred compensation of more than $556,000 in January 2009, on top of her $302,000 salary the previous year.
Levin, the firm’s founder, has close ties to the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. Levin and his wife, Fay Hartog Levin, are long-time acquaintances of the president’s, and have personally donated nearly $1 million to Democratic candidates and committees since 1989, including about $25,000 each to Obama.
The Levins each hold personal stakes in the Kingsbury development worth at least $1 million as of 2011.
Jarrett’s involvement in Chicago real estate development between 1992 and 2009 was marred with controversy, much of which centered on Habitat’s role as the sole developer for “family public housing,” a status granted under a district court ruling in 1987.
Under Jarrett’s leadership, Habitat oversaw the development of a number of public housing projects, one of which, in the Cabrini Green neighborhood, was dubbed a “national symbol of urban despair.” Others became so run-down the city had to ask the federal government to intervene.
A 2003 Harvard Law Reviewarticle cited the decline of the Cabrini Green development as an embodiment of the negative consequence associated with the “privatization of public housing.”
“They are rapidly displacing poor people, and these companies are profiting from this displacement,” Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle of Southside Together Organizing for Power, a Chicago community organization, told the Boston Globe in 2008.
This is a rare piece of decent journalism from CNN. Every once in a while the elite media does this so they can claim they are fair and balanced, but honestly like this is infrequent to put it mildly.
This is a case where Texas gun laws saved at least one life. A man decided to stab a woman to death right in front of a school where she had just dropped her child off for the school day. An armed bystander used his gun to stop the violent crime in progress.
If gun free school zone laws were misapplied this could have been much worse. It is no accident that criminals and mass killers target school as they know that their potential victims will be disarmed by the state.
SAN ANTONIO – A woman is in critical condition after she was stabbed outside her child’s school Tuesday morning.
The attack happened around 10:00 a.m. Tuesday outside the Bonham Academy on St. Mary’s Street. Teresa Barron, 38, had just dropped off her child at the school when the child’s father showed up, and the two got into an argument. The child’s father, 38-year-old Roberto Barron allegedly then stabbed the woman several times in the upper body and neck area.
Police say a bystander who happened to be a concealed handgun license holder pulled his weapon and ordered Barron to drop the knife. Barron surrendered and was taken into custody by the bystander and a school district officer.
The woman was taken to San Antonio Military Medical Center.
Barron was arrested for aggravated assault, and is in jail on a $150,000 bond.
Now that we are back from vacation, it is amazing what a busy news cycle the last two weeks have been. Usually August is a slow time news wise and since the conventions are so scripted we did not expect much news to come from them; boy were we wrong. We have much to catch up on, including an interesting book review to publish, so stay tuned over the next week or so as we catch up on things and hopefully we can offer some new insights of the news of the last two weeks and today.
We will start with this touching story of a man who runs a charity for homeless veterans. He had a run in with Mitt Romney back in 1994 and… well just watch.
This is what government is all about. Forget roads, mass murder through warfare, or locking people up for their consumption choices: it’s making sure that no one gives out water without a permit.
This is from last week but I believe un-noted here: ABC-TV 15 from Phoenix reports that local Christian proselytizer Dana Crow-Smith was ordered by a “Neighborhood Preservation Inspector” to stop giving out free bottled water last month because she lacked a vending permit, though she was not vending.
She is threatening to sue the city with help from the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties group with a focus on religious liberties, if the city doesn’t apologize and swear to train its enforcement officers to not make the same mistake again.
In 1990, the year before the collapse of the Soviet Union, I attended an economic conference in Moscow.
Like my father during his visits to the U.S.S.R. in the early 1930s, I was astonished and appalled by what I saw.
Simple necessities, such as toilet paper, were in short supply. In fact, there was none at all in the airport bathroom stalls for fear it would be stolen. Visitors using the facilities had to request a portion of tissue from an attendant beforehand.
When I walked into one of Moscow’s giant department stores, there was next to nothing on the shelves. For those shoppers who were lucky enough to find something they actually wanted to buy, the purchase process was maddening and time-consuming.
Although the government provided universal healthcare, I never met anyone who wanted to stay in a Soviet hospital. Medical services might have been “free,” but the quality of care was notoriously poor.
Reality Check
My experiences in the Soviet Union underscore why economic freedom is so important for all of us.
Nations with the greatest degree of economic freedom tend to have citizens who are much better off in every way.
No centralized government, no matter how big, how smart or how powerful, can effectively and efficiently control much of society in a beneficial way. On the contrary, big governments are inherently inefficient and harmful.
And yet, the tendency of our own government here in the U.S. has been to grow bigger and bigger, controlling more and more. This is why America keeps dropping in the annual ranking of economic freedom.
Devil’s Bargain
Citizens who over-rely on their government to do everything not only become dependent on their government, they end up having to do whatever the government demands. In the meantime, their initiative and self-respect are destroyed.
It was President Franklin Roosevelt who said: “Continued dependence on [government support] induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”
Businesses can become dependents, too. If your struggling car company wants a government bailout, you’ll probably have to build the government’s car – even if it’s a car very few people want to buy.
Repeatedly asking for government help undermines the foundations of society by destroying initiative and responsibility. It is also a fatal blow to efficiency and corrupts the political process.
When everyone gets something for nothing, soon no one will have anything, because no one will be producing anything.
Cronyism
Under the Soviet system, special traffic lanes were set aside for the sole use of officials in their limousines. This worsened driving conditions for everyone else, but those receiving favored treatment didn’t care.
Today, many governments give special treatment to a favored few businesses that eagerly accept those favors. This is the essence of cronyism.
Many businesses with unpopular products or inefficient production find it much easier to curry the favor of a few influential politicians or a government agency than to compete in the open market.
After all, the government can literally guarantee customers and profitability by mandating the use of certain products, subsidizing production or providing protection from more efficient competitors.
Cronyism enables favored companies to reap huge financial rewards, leaving the rest of us – customers and competitors alike – worse off.
One obvious example of this involves wind farms. Most cannot turn a profit without the costly subsidies the government provides. Meanwhile, consumers and taxpayers are forced to pay an average of five times more for wind-generated electricity.
We see far too many legislative proposals that would subsidize one form of energy over another, penalize certain emissions from one industry but not another, or place protective tariffs that hurt consumers.
Legacies
Karl Marx famously said: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
The result of this approach is not equality, but rather a lowering of everyone’s standards to some minimal level.
Some people worry about the disparity of wealth in a system of economic freedom. What they don’t realize is that the same disparity exists in the least-free countries.
The difference is who is better off.
Under economic freedom, it is the people who do the best job of producing products and services that make people’s lives better.
On the other hand, in a system without economic freedom, the wealthiest are the tyrants who make people’s lives miserable.
As a result of this, the income of the poorest in the least-free countries is one-tenth of what it is in the freest.
Elected officials are often asked what they would like as their legacy. I’m never going to run for office, but I can tell you how I would answer that question.
I want my legacy to be greater freedom, greater prosperity and a better way of life for my family, our employees and all Americans. And I wish the same for every nation on earth.
Charles Koch is the Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, Inc.
In an ABC News/Washington Post poll, 28 percent of seniors viewed Ryan favorably while 28 percent viewed him unfavorably before Romney selected him to be his running mate. After his selection, 46% of those seniors now view him favorably while 28 percent still view him unfavorably. In just one weekend, Ryan has increased his favorability numbers among seniors by 14 percentage points, even as Democrats spent the weekend trying to demonize Ryan and his budget.
Public Policy Polling (PPP), the left-leaning outfit that does polling for the liberal website, Daily Kos, polled voters in Ohio over the weekend, tweeted that Ryan’s numbers in Ohio are actually best among seniors, with 38 percent of seniors viewing Ryan favorability as opposed to 29 percent who see him unfavorably. The full PPP poll will be released on Tuesday, but the tweet can be seen below.
This should not be a surprise to the mainstream media. In 2011, a Gallup poll found that seniors preferredRyan’s budget over Obama’s, despite what the mainstream media tried to lead Americans to believe. This is probably why CBS edited out the portion of its interview with Ryan and Romney on Sunday’s “60 Minutes” in which Ryan talked about how his mother was a Florida resident who was on Medicare. That portion of the interview was only available on CBS’s website and was cut from the national television broadcast.
The nation has witnessed two very high-profile shootings in recent weeks — one at a Colorado theater and another at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.
While gun-control fanatics have jumped on these events to promote their cause, the truth is that each of these tragic incidents demonstrates the failure of gun control.
In Colorado, the Century 16 theaters in Aurora are “gun free” zones where people are prohibited from carrying weapons for self-defense.
If this sad scenario sounds familiar, it should — as almost every large-scale massacre in this country has occurred in an area where guns are outlawed: Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, etc.
In all of these shootings, the victims were disarmed by law or regulation — yes, even at Fort Hood. They were made mandatory victims by restrictions that never stop the bad guys from getting or using guns.
In Wisconsin, Wade Michael Page bought his guns legally at a gun store before killing six people at a Sikh temple. This underscores the obvious: No background check in the world can stop a hate-filled person like Page, who had a clean record, from acquiring firearms. Nor can the checks stop determined criminals, who only have to acquire fake IDs to conceal their identities.
In fact, many countries that have much stricter gun controls than the United States have failed to prevent gun-related massacres from occurring. In Norway last year, 69 people were gunned down by one person. In England, a taxi driver used an illegal gun to murder 12 people in 2010.
Those shootings are just the tip of the iceberg, as massacres have occurred all over the world in gun-control havens.
Nevertheless, some think curtailing our “easy access to firearms” will make us safer. If that were true, how does one explain El Paso, Texas, which was ranked by CQ Press as America’s safest big city in 2010 — even though residents there can carry concealed firearms (and live quite peacefully)?
Right across the border, Juarez City, Mexico, has very stringent gun-control laws and one of the highest murder rates in the world. Any sensible person would choose El Paso over the “gun free” zone in Juarez.
Despite these obvious lessons, there have been calls on Capitol Hill to punish the millions of American citizens who have not — and will not — ever commit crimes. Among other things, gun-control advocates want to limit the size of magazines, arguing, “No one needs that many rounds of ammunition.”
This is a dangerous argument. If we turn the Bill of Rights into a “Bill of Needs,” our liberties will be short-lived for sure. After all, who needs the dozens of newspapers and magazines that line the shelves of supermarkets? Or who needs a car that drives more than 100 mph?
Still, some ask, who really needs a magazine that holds lots of ammunition? How about the displaced people who, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, had to fend for themselves against roving gangs?
How about the Korean merchants who armed themselves with “assault” weapons and large-capacity magazines during the Los Angeles riots in 1992? Their stores remained standing while others around them burned to the ground.
This shows that when one is facing gang or mob violence and the police are nowhere to be found (as occurred in both examples above) you need more than just a six-shooter. There are, literally, millions of examples where good people had to protect themselves long before the police could reach them.
Take the shooting at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs in 2007. A gunman armed with 1,000 rounds of ammunition entered the church intending to commit the greatest slaughter on U.S. soil using a gun.
But he was able to kill just two people because he was met by an armed woman, Jeanne Assam, who used her concealed firearm to incapacitate the gunman, thus saving hundreds of lives at the church before the police could arrive.
Even recently, the nation has been treated to a couple of very dramatic self-defense shootings. One occurred at an Ocala, Fla., Internet cafe, the other at a jewelry store in Garden Grove, Calif.
In both cases, security cameras captured the shootings, and the videos show peaceful, armed people sending the bad guys fleeing — even tripping over themselves — as they storm out the door.
All of this shows that gun owners want politicians to focus their efforts on punishing bad guys and to leave their guns alone.
Voters do not vote for gun control. This was President Bill Clinton’s conclusion after he lost control of Congress in 1994, and it was the conclusion of the Al Gore campaign after he lost his bid for the presidency in 2000.
According to polling organizations Rasmussen in 2007 and Gallup in 2009, more Americans oppose gun control than support it.
Considering all this data, any candidate who supports gun control should be asked the old Dirty Harry question: “Do you feel lucky, punk?”
Larry Pratt is executive director of Gun Owners of America. Erich Pratt, GOA’s director of communications, contributed to this article.
Some idiot prosecutor actuality wasted the taxpayers money with this nonsense. These are the kind of idiots that get voted into office. Who is the judge that sentenced him? He should be made into a laughing stock.
Gary Harrington, the Oregon man convicted of collecting rainwater and snow runoff on his rural property surrendered Wednesday morning to begin serving his 30-day, jail sentence in Medford, Ore.
“I’m sacrificing my liberty so we can stand up as a country and stand for our liberty,” Harrington told a small crowd of people gathered outside of the Jackson County (Ore.) Jail.
Several people held signs that showed support for Harrington as he was taken inside the jail.
Harrington was found guilty two weeks ago of breaking a 1925 law for having, what state water managers called “three illegal reservoirs” on his property. He was convicted of nine misdemeanors, sentenced to 30 days in jail and fined over $1500 for collecting rainwater and snow runoff on his property.
The Oregon Water Resources Department, claims that Harrington has been violating the state’s water use law by diverting water from streams running into the Big Butte River.
But Harrington says he is not diverting the state’s water — merely collecting rainwater and snow melt that falls or flows on his own property.
Harrington has vowed to continue to fight the penalty, stating that the government has become “big bullies” and that “from here on in, I’m going to fight it.”
“They’ve just gotten to be big bullies and if you just lay over and die and give up, that just makes them bigger bullies, Harrington said in an interview two weeks ago with CNSNews.com.
“We as Americans, we need to stand on our constitutional rights, on our rights as citizens and hang tough. This is a good country, we’ll prevail,” he said.
It isn’t just PoliticalArena saying it. It is no secret that we like Governor Palin. We do so for two very important reasons, (1) her legislative accomplishments as governor are only equaled by famed governors such as Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker, and (2) Palin took on one of the most powerful corrupt political machines in the country and was able to tear most of it down even though much of it was in her own party. Call her all of the names you want, but any male governor with similar accomplishments would be whispered about for a VP pick.
Quite frankly, we do not care what the conventional wisdom is or what the elite media says, we look at the record, what got done and what didn’t and that is how we make our judgments. In politics, words are usually hollow so fruits are the only real substance.
Each of five candidates she has endorsed this year who have faced primaries or other campaigns have won, including former Texas solicitor general Ted Cruz, who Tuesday beat the state’s well-connected lieutenant governor for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. …
She has endorsed just nine Republicans this year — five of them women, according to the Web site of SarahPAC, her political committee. In an interview on Fox News on Wednesday, Palin said that she is making down-ticket races, not the presidential campaign, a focus of her efforts this year. She called Senate and House races “so instrumental in reforming government, shrinking it, allowing the private sector to grow and thrive.”
This might be easy to dismiss if Palin made a habit of endorsing front-runners, but that’s not been the case. Ted Cruz started off at a large disadvantage to Lt. Governor David Dewhurst in practically every metric imaginable. Dewhurst had Rick Perry’s endorsement, a high profile office, tons of his own money to use in the primary fight, and at one time a huge lead in the polls. In the first round of the primary in May, Cruz only narrowly forced a runoff, at 30% and Dewhurst just a shade under 48%. The Tea Party engagement that Palin helped facilitate took Cruz from 18 points down in May to a 13-point victory this week — a remarkable 31-point turnaround in just two months.
Similarly, Palin backed Tea Party upstart Richard Mourdock against longtime incumbent Dick Lugar in Indiana’s GOP primary. Palin endorsed Mourdock late in the cycle, just a couple of weeks before the primary. Lugar had been up as much as 25 points in the polls in early 2012, but two weeks prior to her endorsement, Mourdock’s internal poll had him even with Lugar. One week after Palin endorsed Mourdock, he was 10 points up on Lugar in what the local newspaper called “a dramatic slide” for the incumbent. By the time the election rolled around one week later, Mourdock ended up with a 22-point victory over the entrenched incumbent.
I jump on every opportunity to respectfully challenge my 84-year-old black dad’s loyalty to Obama. Dad has been a Christian pastor over 50 years. He lives in Maryland, and I live in Florida. I called Dad to ask if he participated in Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day. He said no, he had not heard about it. Then, he added, “All I know is Chick-fil-A discriminates against gays.”
Folks, I was outraged. Struggling to keep my composure, I passionately said, “Dad, that is a lie! You have got to stop getting your news from the mainstream media!”
I went on to explain to my dad what the protest and appreciation day were really about. Dad was shocked. He does not support same-sex marriage, and he was pretty grossed out when I told him that in retaliation homosexuals have planned a “kiss-in” at Chick-fil-A restaurants.
I also took the occasion to inform Dad that black pastors across America have organized to protest Obama’s support of same-sex marriage. Again, Dad knew nothing about the black pastors’ protest.
At my local Chick-fil-A restaurant, Mavis and I were the only blacks there in support of the protest, amongst hundreds of white Christians and Tea Party patriots.
So what is going on? Why is the truth not getting to a majority of black Americans? I fault a majority of black media outlets and the mainstream media.
For the most part, conservative talk radio is a white thing. Even black conservative radio talk show hosts have a mostly white following.
How do we get the truth to black America? Since I am writing about this problem, one might assume I have a solution. Well, I do not, and it frustrates me.
My conversation with Dad was yesterday. He called me at 9 AM this morning. “Why haven’t I heard about what Christians were doing in support of Chick-fil-A?” I told Dad the reason is because the mainstream media, where he gets his news, is in the pocket of the socialists/progressives who embrace same-sex marriage. The mainstream media (CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC) gave the phenomenon minimal coverage.
Dad was surprised to learn that all who oppose same-sex marriage are branded bigots and haters by his beloved Democratic Party and the mainstream media. Dad said he does not hate or judge anyone. However, the Bible says homosexuality is wrong. He must stand on the Word of God.
Patriots, my excitement was overwhelming. For years I have been waiting for the correct moment and approach to “respectfully” tell Dad that his blind loyalty to Obama and the Democrats contradicts everything he has stood for and taught me. The moment was miraculously here. Dad was on the phone, asking questions and listening.
My mind was racing. “OK! OK! How can I give him a history lesson and Conservatism vs. Liberalism 101 in as few words as possible?” I thought, “Calm down and take it slow.” We talked for an hour.
Dad did not know that not only did Obama say that he supports same-sex marriage, but he vowed to be an advocate of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities. Dad told me to send him the link, which is pretty amazing, considering I have not been successful getting Dad to check his e-mail.
Dad was unaware that the Democratic Party is considering making same-sex marriage a part of its platform.
I explained to Dad that the mainstream media spins the truth and, in many cases, lies to support its socialist/progressive, anti-Christian, anti-God agenda.
For example: Dad heard from his media sources that Republicans, Christians, and conservatives are trying to ban contraception for women. Yes, Dad was familiar with the reported “War on Women.”
I told Dad that no one is trying to stop women from obtaining birth control. Contraception is cheap — available at Walmart for five bucks or so. I explained that under ObamaCare, Christian institutions and Christians will be forced to fund contraception and abortion services against their will and their faith. Again, Dad was shocked. Dad said he does not want to fund such services.
My 84-year-old dad joined the Democratic Party in his youth, believing it to be for the hardworking little guy. I informed Dad that that Democratic Party no longer exists. In short, spoiled-brat old hippies run the Democratic Party today.
A majority of the Democratic Party leadership comprises far-left liberals who hate America and believe that man can fix every problem. God is an imaginary being clung to by ignorant, bitter, and racist middle Americans. These Democrats believe they are intellectually superior — and thus far better-qualified to manage our lives. This is why the Democratic Party seeks ever-expanding governmental controls over our behavior. Outrageously, death panels in ObamaCare even give government power to decide who lives and who dies.
In response to the socialists/progressives’ disbelief in God, Dad, a preacher over 50 years, said, “Your house had a builder. I did not see him. Nor do I know him. But I know he exists. Man also had a builder.”
Dad ended our conservation with “I’m going to Chick-fil-A today to spend some money”.
[In the interests of full disclosure I know the people running the Facebook page and web site to raise money for this outstanding young lady. They are dignified career professionals and pillars of their community. This is totally legit. You can be certain that Rachel will get the money raised. And I must confess, I donated. How can you not? She is just so perfectly adorable. – PoliticalArena Editor]
Rachel – The face of Chick-Fil-A’s legendary customer service.
The Facebook page is called A Tip for Rachel and the title reads:
Have you seen the video? No matter what side of the debate you are on, nobody should harass someone trying to make a living. Give Rachel the tip she deserved for dealing with Mr. Smith! http://www.indiegogo.com/a-tip-for-rachel?a=974057. [Note – Indiegogo is having technical issues, but on the A Tip for Rachel page is another link that Rachel controls directly]
The site has been up for less than a day and donations are already coming in.
On Friday, employees of a Chick-fil-A in Torrance, California, were greeted with the words “tastes like hate” scrawled in large black letters on the side of the building, the Los Angeles Times reported.
One Chick-fil-A employee was berated by Adam Smith, who recorded the incident. Smith was later fired from Vante, a Tucson-based medical equipment company.
An article at Twitchy noted that liberal “tolerance bullies” celebrated the vandalism.
“Chick-fil-A vandalized overnight with hateful graffiti. That’s very good. I would have set fire to it,” one person tweeted.
One thing is certain, when the radicalized progressive secular left seeks to boycott you and trash you with their friends in the elite media, if you stand up to them with dignity it results in record breaking sales.
CFA handled this PR crisis perfectly. They were gracious under fire, corrected the record when asked civilly, but most importantly they did not give in to a radicalized anti-capitalist pressure group. The value in letting them talk to the hand cannot be understated. Why? Because when a radical pressure group targets you, if you give in they will use that victory to promote themselves to others and to the media at YOUR expense. Any apology to such a group will be twisted into an admission of bigotry (the left calls anyone who stands up for freedom a bigot). Also – AND THIS IS MOST IMPORTANT – if you give in to a pressure group they will keep coming at you again for more and more. They are like the dog coming back after you give them treats, no pennance will ever be enough. Your caving in will also be a signal to other pressure groups that you are ripe for the picking. The extortion will never end.
On the other hand, if you hold your ground, eventually, and it won’t take long, the elite media and the pressure groups will go away. Why? Because when you refuse to capitulate they realize that they are being ineffective and are being made to look ineffective to others – if that continues their effectiveness as a pressure group will evaporate.
UPDATE – Adam Smith apologizes, but still admits his anti-Christian bigotry by calling Christian groups “anti-human rights” and other such nonsense. Smith says that human rights are threatened by Chick-Fil-A. It is amazing that after all that Smith has been through he has no idea of the tremendous about of charity work Chick-Fil-A corporation does, as a result I have doubts about his sincerity as it seems he really has not learned much. – LINK.
There is also another lesson to be learned from this. No matter how someone enters the public arena wackos and “internet trolls” (bitter people people who get off by finding any excuse to cause misery on the net) will pile on and do what disturbed people do. Everyone who is in the public arena even just a little gets impacted by this including yours truly.
Let me be CLEAR! This issue is not about gays, it is about freedom. The “gay” issue is just the crutch being used today to disguise an attack on capitalism and freedom. Next time it will be some other crutch, but the attack will be the same. The gay people on my friends list support capitalism and freedom as well as anyone can and in that cause they have my support!
No matter the charge when the left cries wolf:
GAYS! (insert leftist cause here – this time it is let politicians punish freedom of religion)…
RIGHTS FOR WOMEN! (government forces the church and all private enterprises to pay for your birth control)…
RACE! (let government regulate all sorts of things that violate property rights)…
DISABLED VETS! (let government micromanage all sorts of aspects to private business including how high your mirrors are and how the steps to your door are built) …
ENVIRONMENT! (allow government to regulate all forms of production and virtually take over the energy industry picking winners and losers)…
DRUG GANGS! (Efforts to take away guns specifically from the law abiding – LINK)….
GLOBAL COOLING! (Solution is centralized control of the economy, the expansion of the state and abandoning of limited government and capitalism)…
GLOBAL WARMING! (Solution is centralized control of the economy, the expansion of the state and abandoning of limited government and capitalism)…
The waving left hand is the wedge issue, the right hand is doing what they want to accomplish. This is the modus operandi of the far left. The headline from the Huffington Post below is merely an example of this truth”
An association of black church leaders has come out against the attempt to redefine marriage and has spoken out against the Democrat Party leadership. You will notice that the so called “gay groups” have nothing to say about it. Why? Because the leadership of groups such as GLAAD could give a rip about gays and are functioning as a leftist radical group of pure ideology, much like the NAACP whose leadership constantly acts against the interests of inner city black families to support teachers unions and a far left political agenda. If this is about principle why aren’t these same “gay advocacy groups” doing “kiss off” protests at black inner city churches? [Answer – because it could chase away votes from Democrats].
Please enjoy this slideshow from Chick-Fil-A at South Bend and Mishawaka, Indiana
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Radicalized homosexual groups problem is not that they are homosexual, that is just the wedge issue they are using as a distraction, the problem with them is that they are radicalized leftist groups that use the claim that they speak for homosexuals as just another vehicle to attack capitalism and their pro-capitalist political enemies which is their true objective.
The case of MN Forward is another example of this truth – “radicalized homosexual activists” called MN Forward a hate group using all the same rhetoric. MN Forward is a group that supports business in Minnesota, their “crime” is that they gave a small donation to a Republican candidate who supports small business and happens to support traditional marriage. MN Forward is a small group that few had heard of that has no stake in the culture war, but they are effective at lobbying state government in Minnesota in preserving an free economic environment that is favorable for creating wealth and jobs. The average voter didn’t know that MN Forward even existed.
When people act on principle they have no need to lie and in fact have a vested interest in telling the truth to support their cause. GLAAD had this to say about actor Kirk Cameron:
“Saying that gay people are ‘detrimental to civilization’ might be ‘loving’ in Kirk Cameron’s mind, but it’s gay youth and victims of bullying who truly suffer from adults like Cameron who espouse these ideas. Cameron used his platform to attack gay Americans and is now attempting to play victim in an effort to sell his upcoming movie. That Cameron would risk the health and safety of young people in order to do so speaks for itself.
There is one problem, Cameron did not say that. Actually there are two problems, GLAAD changed what Cameron said, and then used the false accusation to paint him as an accessory to violence. GLAAD is making a bogus case that Cameron engaged in some kind of crime, or at least what should be considered a crime. By tying Cameron to violence falsely they are inciting others to do violence to him.
Radicalized leftist groups such as GLAAD falsely accuse the political enemies of the left of being tied to violence, and are, in turn trying to incite others to do violence against them, in this case Christians. It is the worst form of bigotry imaginable. The leadership of GLAAD does this because Christians are more likely to vote for free market Republican candidates and as we pointed out above, you won’t see GLAAD attacking associations of black churches who oppose gay marriage. Why? Because they tend to vote for Democrats who oppose free markets and favor government control of the economy. Such leftist groups are not even the slightest bit interested in protecting the freedom of religion, conscience, speech and association of those with whom they disagree.
While NAACP President Benjamin Jealous lashed out at new state laws requiring photo ID for voting, an NAACP executive sits in prison, sentenced for carrying out a massive voter fraud scheme.
In a story ignored by the national media, in April a Tunica County, Miss., jury convicted NAACP official Lessadolla Sowers on 10 counts of fraudulently casting absentee ballots. Sowers is identified on an NAACP website as a member of the Tunica County NAACP Executive Committee.
Sowers received a five-year prison term for each of the 10 counts, but Circuit Court Judge Charles Webster permitted Sowers to serve those terms concurrently, according to the Tunica Times, the only media outlet to cover the sentencing.
“This crime cuts against the fabric of our free society,” Judge Webster said.
Sowers was found guilty of voting in the names of Carrie Collins, Walter Howard, Sheena Shelton, Alberta Pickett, Draper Cotton and Eddie Davis. She was also convicted of voting in the names of four dead persons: James L. Young, Dora Price, Dorothy Harris, and David Ross.
AARP, whose board of directors has been hijacked by liberal political activists threw seniors under the bus when they supported ObamaCare with its bureaucrats that can deny seniors access to care (after Obamacare is fully implemented) and its half a TRILLION dollars in Medicare cuts. President Obama of course sought to enrich those who run AARP with some giveaways [from my old college blog – yes we were paying attention even then]:
AARP Making Mega-Millions on Corrupt ObamaCare “Easter Egg” – LINK
Corrupt AARP Health Care Deal Puts Seniors at Risk – LINK
AARP and Many Others Hiking Premiums or Dumping Coverage Because of ObamaCare – LINK
Today, the Department of Labor proudly announced that it had given away some $260 million in grants to various organizations through its Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP). SCSEP is “a community service and work-based training program for older workers – providing subsidized, part-time, community service training for unemployed, low-income persons 55 or older who have poor employment prospects.”
Sounds great. Except the biggest recipients of SCSEP cash are Democratic political surrogates.
The largest single recipient of general SCSEP funds was – you guessed it – the American Association of Retired Persons Foundation, which pulled down almost $52 million. The AARP Foundation is a wing of the AARP, which stands to make some $1 billion over the next decade thanks to Obamacare and spends hundreds of millions of dollars to push liberal policies. The head of the AARP contributed some $8,900 to Obama’s campaign committees in 2008.
Coincidentally, the DOL is handing $6.6 million to the National Urban League – and it just so happens that President Obama spoke at the NUL this week in an attempt to reinvigorate his black support base.
The goodies keep on coming for President Obama’s friends. And that’s his entire campaign strategy: buy off specific constituency with taxpayer cash, and then let them push him to victory.
There is NO evidence to support the assertion that law enforcement officers are put at risk by law-abiding citizens carrying concealed firearms in their car. There are no studies, even ones with twisted statistics, that draw this conclusion. How can that be? Because there is NO record of a law enforcement officers having been injured by a CCW permit holder during a traffic stop, anywhere in the 44 CCW states.
We can, on the other hand, offer numerous examples of armed citizens coming to the aid of officers in peril:
Herald-Tribune, Sarasota, FL
Driving to work one morning, Jim Povia, of Sarasota, Florida, saw a state trooper with his service pistol drawn, confronting a trio of male suspects during a traffic stop. Povia, a right-to-carry permit holder, pulled over and grabbed his .40 cal. pistol and went to the aid of the officer. The two held the men until backup arrived. The driver of the vehicle was driving with a suspended license and a gun was found in the rear of the vehicle. The three men were charged with felony weapons possession.
The Post, Houston, TX
In the finest tradition of armed citizens who take on crime in their communities, Texan Travis Neel helped save a wounded Harris County deputy sheriff’s life. Witnessing the shooting by one of a trio of Houston gang members after a traffic stop just west of Houston, Neel–who was on his way to his pistol range–pulled his gun and fired, driving the officer’s assailants away. An off-duty sheriff’s deputy also came on the scene and joined Neel in covering the deputy, whose life was saved by his body armor. The trio was captured after a manhunt.
The Bulletin, Norwich, CT
While the situation ended without incident, armed citizen Michael Acree stood ready to lend a hand when a police officer stopped a carload of unruly teenagers outside his Salem, Connecticut, home. Noticing the youths scuffling with the officer, Acree retrieved his pistol and went out onto his lawn. When the youths saw Acree and his handgun, they calmed down and the situation ended peaceably. Acree earned the appreciation both of town officials and the officer.
The Daily Commercial, Leesburg, FL
Vincent McCarthy wasn’t afraid to lend a hand when he noticed a police officer struggling with a man and woman at the side of the road. He tried to help subdue the man who was kicking the officer in the face. Despite McCarthy’s warnings, when the man pressed his assault, the tour boat captain shot him once in the leg with a pistol he is licensed to carry and stopped the attack. Neither the officer nor McCarthy were seriously injured.
The Observer, Charlotte, NC
A North Myrtle Beach, N.C., citizen was credited by the city’s public safety director with possibly saving the life of Police Officer Richard Jernick. Jernick had pulled over a suspected bank robber’s car after a chase, when the suspect charged the cruiser and pointed a gun at the officer, who was still behind the wheel. At that point authorities said, the robbery suspect saw that James Beach, a semi-retired electrician who had joined the pursuit, had a pistol pointed at him. Startled, the robber ran for his car, and Officer Jernick was able to shoot and wound him.
The Star-Banner, Ocala, FL
When a drug-trafficking suspect fleeing a state police traffic stop ran through an Ocala, Fla., campground, he was spotted by the manager. Leonard Hicks armed himself and held the man at gunpoint for pursuing officers. An officer later commented, We wouldn’t have caught the suspect if it hadn’t been for him.
The Valley Daily News, Renton, WA
The armed man who intended to rob a Renton, Wash., gunshop should have been forewarned by the police cruiser he had to walk past to enter the store, and the uniformed officer standing just inside the door. Belatedly noticing the policeman, the would-be robber began shooting at him. The officer and a store clerk armed with a semi-auto pistol returned fire, fatally wounding the man.
The Press-Herald, Minden, LA
During a drug arrest in Webster Parish, La., a sheriff’s deputy and a state trooper found themselves struggling with their two suspects. But four citizens observed the battle and, armed with shotguns, they came to the officers’ aid–enabling them to make the arrests.
The Chronicle, San Francisco, CA
Dave Storton, a San Jose, Calif., police officer, was doing off-duty security work at an apartment complex when two burglars knocked the officer down and attempted to grab his revolver. During the struggle, one of the assailants bit off part of Storton’s ear, but the two attackers were run off by an apartment resident who came to the rescue, armed with a shotgun.
The Daily Oklahoman, Oklahoma City, OK
Miami, Okla., motel owner Oba Edwards witnessed two policemen struggling with a man they were attempting to arrest and saw the man wrest away one officer’s revolver, shoot and kill him. Edwards armed himself and fired a shot that allowed the remaining officer to recover his partner’s revolver and fatally wound the attacker. The dead man was on probation for assault of a Texas police officer.
The Morning Herald, Hagerstown, MD
Police officer Chris Haldeman entered a Chambersburg, PA gold and silver exchange to arrest a suspect in a stolen property case, but the man resisted and a struggle ensued. The 220-lb. suspect had Haldeman pinned to the ground and was choking him when storekeeper Ken Cummings pulled his pistol and shot the officer’s attacker in the leg. The man, a known felon, managed to escape, and Det. Haldeman was treated at a local hospital and released.
The Morning News, Dallas, TX
A stolen car bearing three escaped convicts was stopped on a Kansas highway by a state trooper. When the officer ordered the men from the vehicle, they sped away. With the trooper in pursuit, the escapees crashed in the town of Gorham; two were captured as they crawled free of the wreckage. The third convict attempted to flee on foot, only to be collared by several onlookers who had secured rifles from their pickups at the trooper’s call for assistance.
The Times-Tribune, Corbin, KY
Corbin, Ky., motel operator Ray Miracle came upon state trooper James Phelps attempting to subdue two drunken occupants of a stopped auto and, carrying his revolver, went to the officer’s aid. At that point, another car stopped and one of two men inside levelled a gun on Trooper Phelps. Seeing Miracle’s drawn gun, however, they hastily drove off. Kentucky State Police rewarded Miracle with their highest civilian honor.
The Post, Houston, TX
Ralph Festavan watched as a heroin peddler attacked a Shreveport, La., policeman and grabbed the officer’s gun. Festavan ran to the patrol car parked nearby and got a shotgun with which he shot and killed the pusher.
The Times-Union, Rochester, NY
Dennis Koch was putting storm windows on his fiancee’s house when he observed a youth run into nearby woods. He passed the information on to a police officer who stopped by minutes later and told Koch he was searching for a burglary suspect. He gave Koch permission to assist him. Carrying his pistol, for which he has a permit, Koch found the youth hiding and held him in custody until the officer could place him under arrest.
The Memphis Press-Scimitar, Memphis, TN
A Missouri state trooper had been shot three times by two armed robbery suspects when armed citizen Robert Riley of Tiptonville, Tenn., rushed to his aid. Riley fired a small caliber pistol at the assailants until they surrendered. The law officer was then rushed to a hospital.
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Ontario, CA
Inland Valley, California, Humane Society officer Amy Murillo, 27, was responding to a local resident’s pleas when she attempted to call off a vicious dog. But the animal turned on Murillo, jumping at her and causing her to fall against her vehicle. She suffered several bites to the head and chest from the crazed animal. Witnessing the young officer’s plight, the resident who had summoned her help returned the favor by running to his house and retrieving a handgun. The dog then turned on the man who shot twice, killing it.
The Daily Facts, Redlands, CA Redlands, California, sheriff’s deputies credited an armed citizen with helping them capture four men and two juveniles who had just robbed a convenience store and pointed a gun at a plain clothes police officer as they made their initial getaway. Following a short chase all the suspects were captured. “One of the guys was detained at gunpoint by a resident who really helped us,” Sheriff’s Sgt. Bobby Phillips said. “He kept him there on the ground until we got there.”
The Review Courier, Alva, OK
Things had turned ugly for Oklahoma Highway Patrol Officer Rick Wallace. He had found marijuana on a speeder, but was overpowered by the man before he could cuff him. Passerby Adolph Krejsek witnessed the altercation and came to the rescue, using his own firearm to help the trooper control the suspect. After helping subdue the assailant, Krejsek used the injured trooper’s radio to call for help.
Associated Press, IN In Indianapolis 17-year-old Gerald Watson stood near a policeman who questioned a robbery suspect when the suspect’s accomplice appeared on the scene and shot the officer down. Watson, who had taught marksmanship at the YMCA, grabbed the fallen policeman’s service revolver and shot the felon dead.
UPI, AL In Saraland, Ala., the berserk husband of a woman charged with possession of illegal whisky killed one police officer and wounded another but, as he tried to make his escape, was shot dead by Carlos McDonald, the proprietor of a nearby shop.
UPI, AL Two gunmen kidnapped an Eclectic, Ala., town policeman and used the officer to gain admittance to the home of Carl Ray Barker in the early morning hours. Barker, an Eclectic banker, was taken by one gunman into town to open the bank’s vault, his wife, child, and the town policeman being held hostage by the armed companion pending a safe return from the bank. When the time-vault resisted opening, the gunman returned Barker to his house and, after some debate, took the policeman away with him to get tape for binding all hostages until morning, when another attempt was to be made on the vault. Barker, now held in his home with wife and child by the second armed man, asked if he could make coffee. The robber assented and Barker put water on the stove and got it boiling. “I took the scalding water to the living room,” said Barker. “When he held his cup, I just poured the water in his face and grabbed his gun.” Barker pistol-whipped the robber into submission, loaded a shotgun and waited for the return of the other bandit. When the door opened, the captive policeman dived out of the way and Barker killed the would-be bank robber with two blasts. Barker said he feared for his family’s safety and, “I didn’t want my bank to get a bad name about being robbed.”
You just cant make this stuff up folks. Of course Spanier has been shilling and covering for the progressive secular left for years – LINK and was invested in the child sex abuse cover-up according the the investigation of Penn State by former FBI Director Louis Freeh.
Political commentator Marie Garr said it best, “Guess they figure he can keep a secret……….GEEZ!”
Graham Spanier might have been ousted from his post at the helm of Penn State over the sex-abuse scandal that engulfed the university, but it seems he’s found a backup employer: the American taxpayer.
Only a disgraced public figure would consider joining the much-maligned ranks of the federal workforce as a step up, reputation-wise. We can assume there were no openings for a used-car salesman.
Spanier was faulted in an internal Penn State report after the conviction on child-molestation charges of former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. The report said he, head coach Joe Paterno and others helped cover up Sandusky’s abuse.
His lawyer confirms to the Loop that Spanier is working on a part-time consulting basis for a “top-secret” agency on national security issues. But the gig is so hush-hush, he couldn’t even tell his attorneys the name of the agency. In April — months after his ouster as president but before the release of the internal report — he told the Patriot-News of central Pennsylvania that he was working on a “special project for the U.S. government relating [to] national security.”
But who’s he working for? The CIA? Homeland Security? Or maybe just a dull consulting firm with a government contract?
“I have no idea,”says his lawyer, Peter Vaira. “We know the work is in security and he’s prohibited from disclosing which agency or agencies he’s working for.”
Here is the rub. Even if he is not working for a government agency directly and he is a contractor for an intelligence agency he would still have to submit an SF86 and still pass the most rigorous national security scrutiny – unless of course that process was greased for him just like it has been for others in the Obama White House who couldn’t pass such scrutiny normally on their best day. One thing is almost a certainty; someone tipped off the Washington Post to this and they almost certainly know more than what they are reporting here.
They say that the editing doesn’t change the meaning….. like heck it doesn’t. If it didn’t they would state this in every piece with an asterisk and more journalists and campaign staffers would be willing to go on the record to talk about this. They didn’t teach my this in J-School.
The quotations come back redacted, stripped of colorful metaphors, colloquial language and anything even mildly provocative.
They are sent by e-mail from the Obama headquarters in Chicago to reporters who have interviewed campaign officials under one major condition: the press office has veto power over what statements can be quoted and attributed by name.
Most reporters, desperate to pick the brains of the president’s top strategists, grudgingly agree. After the interviews, they review their notes, check their tape recorders and send in the juiciest sound bites for review.
The verdict from the campaign — an operation that prides itself on staying consistently on script — is often no, Barack Obama does not approve this message.
The push and pull over what is on the record is one of journalism’s perennial battles. But those negotiations typically took place case by case, free from the red pens of press minders. Now, with a millisecond Twitter news cycle and an unforgiving, gaffe-obsessed media culture, politicians and their advisers are routinely demanding that reporters allow them final editing power over any published quotations.
Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all midlevel aides in Chicago and at the White House — almost anyone other than spokesmen who are paid to be quoted. (And sometimes it applies even to them.) It is also commonplace throughout Washington and on the campaign trail.
The Romney campaign insists that journalists interviewing any of Mitt Romney’s five sons agree to use only quotations that are approved by the press office. And Romney advisers almost always require that reporters ask them for the green light on anything from a conversation that they would like to include in an article.
From Capitol Hill to the Treasury Department, interviews granted only with quote approval have become the default position. Those officials who dare to speak out of school, but fearful of making the slightest off-message remark, shroud even the most innocuous and anodyne quotations in anonymity by insisting they be referred to as a “top Democrat” or a “Republican strategist.”
It is a double-edged sword for journalists, who are getting the on-the-record quotes they have long asked for, but losing much of the spontaneity and authenticity in their interviews.
Jim Messina, the Obama campaign manager, can be foul-mouthed. But readers would not know it because he deletes the curse words before approving his quotes. Brevity is not a strong suit of David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser. So he tightens up his sentences before giving them the O.K.
Stuart Stevens, the senior Romney strategist, is fond of disparaging political opponents by quoting authors like Walt Whitman and referring to historical figures like H. R. Haldeman, Richard Nixon’s chief of staff. But such clever lines later rarely make it past Mr. Stevens.
Many journalists spoke about the editing only if granted anonymity, an irony that did not escape them. No one said the editing altered the meaning of a quote. The changes were almost always small and seemingly unnecessary, they said.
Those who did speak on the record said the restrictions seem only to be growing. “It’s not something I’m particularly proud of because there’s a part of me that says, ‘Don’t do it, don’t agree to their terms,’ ” said Major Garrett, a correspondent for The National Journal. “There are times when this feels like I’m dealing with some of my editors. It’s like, ‘You just changed this because you could!’ ”
It was difficult to find a news outlet that had not agreed to quote approval, albeit reluctantly. Organizations like Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Reuters and The New York Times have all consented to interviews under such terms.
“We don’t like the practice,” said Dean Baquet, managing editor for news at The New York Times. “We encourage our reporters to push back. Unfortunately this practice is becoming increasingly common, and maybe we have to push back harder.”
The Obama campaign declined to make Mr. Plouffe or Mr. Messina available to explain their media practices. “We are not putting anyone on the record for this story,” said Katie Hogan, an Obama spokeswoman, without a hint of irony. She pointed to the many unrestricted interviews with campaign officials every day on television and when the press corps travels with the president.
Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said the White House has made a concerted effort to make more officials available to the news media. “We have a lot more people talking a lot more often now,” he said.
Both presidential campaigns are keenly aware of what can happen when they speak too freely. Damaging sound bites can live on in the news cycle for days. Mr. Obama’s remark last month during a televised news conference that “the private sector is doing fine” landed almost immediately in attack ads. And Eric Fehrnstrom’s “Etch A Sketch” comment on CNN, about softening some of the harder positions Mr. Romney took during the primaries, continues to haunt the Romney campaign five months later.
Reporters who have covered the Obama presidency say the quote-approval process fits a pattern by this White House of finding new ways to limit its exposure in the news media.
“We realize there’s a caution and a wariness about stray comments driving the news cycle,” said Caren Bohan of Reuters, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. “The argument we make is that if a president or a candidate is out there more, I think these things are less likely to be as glaring.”
Modern White Houses have long had “background briefings,” gatherings of top officials who speak to reporters under the condition that they are quoted anonymously. With time, the restrictions have become broader, often bordering on the absurd.
In 2007, Vice President Dick Cheney outed himself in a briefing the White House intended to be anonymous during an overseas trip. “I’ve seen some press reporting says, ‘Cheney went in to beat up on them,’ ” the vice president told reporters, according to the official transcript, adding, “That’s not the way I work.”
Though reporters with him protested, the vice president’s office refused to allow them to identify Mr. Cheney by name — even though it was clear who was speaking.
Under President Obama, the insistence on blanket anonymity has grown to new levels.
The White House’s latest innovation is a variation of the background briefing called the “deep-background briefing,” which it holds for groups of reporters, sometimes several dozen at a time. Reporters may paraphrase what senior administration officials say, but they are forbidden to put anything in quotation marks or identify the speakers.
The White House held such a briefing after the Supreme Court’s health care ruling last month with officials including Mr. Plouffe, Mr. Carney and Dan Pfeiffer, the communications director. But when reporters asked to quote part of the conversation, even anonymously, they were told no. Even the spokesmen were off limits.
One would think that a university that has a law school could grasp something a simple as the First Amendment, but you would be wrong if you thought that. Censorship and discrimination against conservatives, Jews, Christians and other groups not in favor with the radical left are under some form of attack at our public universities. This problem is so huge that there are at least half a dozen civil rights organizations that use most ore all of their resources fighting just this type of illegal discrimination; and they are so overwhelmed with cases that they have to be selective on what cases to draw attention to.
If you thought college was a place for young people to speak out, challenges one another’s deeply-held beliefs and grow intellectually, chances are you’ve never been to Indiana University Southeast.
The school, located just 10 miles north of Louisville, Ky., is the latest college to see its speech code come under fire from a group that advocates freedom of speech on campuses. One stipulation in the code requires that students may only “express opinions” within a free speech zone, which is antithetical to what a college should stand for, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), an advocacy organization which defends the free speech and due process rights of college students.
“It’s the price you pay for living in a free society,” Robert Shibley, Senior Vice President of FIRE, told FoxNews.com.”The entire enterprise of a university is to express scholarly thoughts and opinions…restraints on that are impossible.”
The broad regulation probably doesn’t even state what its clumsy crafters meant it to say, said Samantha Harris, FIRE director of speech code research.
“IUS almost certainly doesn’t mean this–if you want to tell your friend that you think it’s hot outside, you have to go to the zone to do it…it’s an indicator of just how poorly written and unconstitutional this policy is,” she said.
IUS’s code also requires university approval for acts of ‘expressed opinions’ by submitting an application at least five days in advance.
But the school defended the speech code, expressing concern the exercise of First Amendment rights outside designated zones could disrupt others’ pursuit of an education.
“[The guidelines] were intended to provide some guidance on the issue so that those wishing to gather and express an opinion could do so without endangering people or property,” the school told FoxNews.com in a statement. “The guidelines also were intended to protect the rights of all students to have unfettered access to educational activities on campus (in other words, the exercise of free speech rights should not result in blocking access to buildings or disrupting classes or campus events).”
The university also said that it has never had any complaints about the policy since its implementation in 2004, and it welcomes the FIRE’s feedback.
“We have to regulate other groups who come from off campus. Some come and preach a lot of hate. We just can’t have them wandering around campus with bullhorns over here,” Joseph Wert, associate professor of Political Science and Dean of the School of Social Sciences at Indiana University Southwest, told FoxNews.com.
Oh that sounds so reasonable doesn’t it? Yes you see, IUS had this problem with people roaming about aimlessly with BULL HORNS shouting so no one could study…….yup that must be it.
Yup, and Joseph Wert had to get a PhD. to come up with that one. Professor Wert you are an idiot, and you are even more of an idiot if you think that anyone is going to fall for such an excuse. First of all, the First Amendment has never been construed by the courts to allow what is known as a “heckler’s veto” meaning that the speech in question is not so much about content as it is about disrupting the lawful activities of others. Your university speech code is written in such a way to adjust the universities illegal reaction depending on the content of the speech; meaning that “Students for Pushing Israel Into the Sea” get a prominent place to hold their speech event, but “Students Against Abortion” get to have their event in a tiny room no one can find. College administrators and professors like Joeseph Wert gets lots of practice making the totally unreasonable sound reasonable.
That is why the policy is written so broadly and poorly, so that it can be used for selective enforcement. There are countless cases of FIRE and other groups helping students who have had such speech codes used against them illegally. This is why FIRE in league with other groups have been suing universities to have such speech codes thrown out by the courts. Universities know about these lawsuits, but too often they go to court anyways knowning full well they are going to lose only for the purpose of forcing civil rights groups to expend more resources. After all it’s only your tax dollars funding your local university.
Chelsea Gruenwald at Resist 44wrote this lovely piece about eight things you should do when dealing with liberals:
The 8 Simple Rules for Defeating Liberals (And Remaining Sane in the Process):
1.Keep calm. One of my grandmother’s favorite sayings is, “Never discuss religion or politics in polite company.” This is because both topics are often accompanied with strong opinions and even stronger emotions. Because of the emotional connection it is easy to get lost in the moment and lose your temper. However, losing your temper rarely wins over the opposition. If you are able to keep your cool during a political debate, it shows leadership and maturity and people are more likely to take your message seriously.
2. Expose the lies but focus on promoting the truth. As with many campaigns, attacks and smears ran ramped in the Wisconsin recall election. The most famous attack came from the Barrett campaign claiming Wisconsin finished last in job creation. Governor Walker produced federally verified numbers proving this claim to be wrong. While acknowledging the falsity of Barrett’s claim, Governor Walker did not dwell on it. Instead, he launched a series of messages to promote the truth. The average American admits to distrusting politicians, so dwelling on a false claim won’t increase support and trust, but producing the truth will.
3.Do not stoop to their level. Yes, liberals are notorious for playing dirty tricks in elections. They are also famous for their “the ends justify the means” mentality. Do not be like them. What’s good for the goose is not good for the gander. Even if you are not running, you are a member of a community, act accordingly.
4.Actions speak louder than words. I have had several extremely liberal friends recently convert to conservatism and they always cite people’s actions as a reason. For example, compare the Wisconsin union protest to the Tea Party rally that happened at the same time. The union protesters surrounded the Tea Party rally, booed during the national anthem, threatened and degraded tea partiers, and left a trail of trash and trampled flowers behind. The tea partiers stuck to their side, were courteous, cleaned up after themselves, and took the time to clean up after the union protesters as well. So while the unions were preaching solidarity, brotherhood, and kindness, it was the tea partiers who actually practiced those values. And people took notice. One friend described that very event as the reason for his conversion.
5.Get involved. One of the powers of the Left is their ability to organize and create a sense of community. There is nothing more defeating than feeling alone. This is why it is essential to reach out to others like you. Volunteer on a campaign, attend a Tea Party; even reaching out to others online can make all the difference.
6.Don’t preach. Engage yourself. Just like a child being scolded by a parent, people are less likely to absorb a message if their thoughts and concerns are ignored. Even if you don’t have the solution, engaging and addressing the concerns of others shows you care. People are more likely to vote for a candidate (or party) if they think they truly care about them. Governor Walker mastered this skill. While Barrett was busy giving speeches and holding rallies, Governor Walker was visiting local businesses, churches, and events to talk with people individually.
7.Know what you are up against. Any psychologist will tell you that personal accounts have much more meaning than statistics. This is because humans can relate to a personal story (and all the emotions that come with it) better than impersonal numbers. Hearsay can only get you so far, but a first hand account, video, and pictures of an event leave a much bigger impact. This is why it is important to have first hand experience with your opponent. I have attended dozens of Wisconsin Union protests, marches, and sing-a-longs. These experiences not only allowed me to develop better-informed opinions, but also to share my experiences with others.
8.Vote. This might be the most important rule. All of your hard work engaging others, promoting the truth, and community involvement will be wasted if you don’t actually vote. Barrett and the unions learned this important lesson on June 5th. While the unions were able to make a lot of noise, cause a fuss, and bring about the recall, they had difficulty getting those same people to vote. This eventually led to their defeat.
Conservatives have been dubbed “the silent majority” for a reason. While liberals beat conservatives 10-to-1 in protest enthusiasm, conservatives continue to show their dominance at the voting booth. You don’t need to be loud and carrying a sign to get your message across, instead practice what you preach, talk to an elderly neighbor, or get involved in a local campaign. The Revolution wasn’t won by occupying a British ship, but by people, big and small, coming together as a community. This holds true for the election in November: we can’t win an election as an individual; we must work together as a team.
I know what the Romney camp is thinking: They have conservatives locked up so they don’t need Palin; since she is polarizing some independents won’t like her. That thinking while having some merit is still very wrong headed.
Independents have voted for TEA Party candidates in droves in 2009 and 2010. Sarah Palin was the driving force behind it. People tell pollsters what they want to hear very often. People who intend to vote GOP and don’t want their friends to know have a history of lying to pollsters. On the other hand I know LOTS of conservatives who intend to stay home this November. The travesty from Chief Justice Roberts helped to motivate them, but make no mistake, there is still a real problem that true conservatives have with Mitt Romney.
If Palin is a master of one thing it is political payback. When Gov. Christie said something stupid about her she let him have it so hard that he never did it again. If Sarah Palin is not invited to the convention with a prominent roll there will be a price to pay and she WILL exact it. She may even stage her own event nearby to suck the wind out of a key Romney event. Palin is far more charismatic than Romney, she knows it and so does the media. She may even rip up the Republican establishment “Good Ole Boy” network at her event. Palin has a long and very effective history of doing just that.
Canadian Free Press:
In the roughly three years since she quit as the state’s chief regulator of the oil industry, Palin has crushed the Republican hierarchy (virtually all male) and nearly every other foe or critic. Political analysts in Alaska refer to the “body count” of Palin’s rivals.
“The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who crossed Sarah,” says pollster Dave Dittman, who worked for her gubernatorial campaign. It includes Ruedrich, Renkes, Murkowski, gubernatorial contenders John Binkley and Andrew Halcro, the three big oil companies in Alaska, and a section of the Daily News called “Voice of the Times,” which was highly critical of Palin and is now defunct.
The bottom line is that Sarah Palin is still the most powerful figure in the Republican Party and too many in the beltway still haven’t managed to accept that. Palin is also a fund raising machine who can help Romney raise funds for the election. In either case, if you guys at the Romney camp think you can out-smart her, you can’t. Just the attempt will raise her ire and you will only end up paying a heavier price.
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
Political Arena 